With five feature films and six shorts screening, Canada was very much in attendance at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

But buyer interest was tough to come by, as has been the case for the past few years. After heydays in the mid-2000s when films like Little Miss Sunshine and Hamlet 2 sold for eight figures in record deals, distributors have been much more cautious. Nonetheless, the Canadian crop managed to stir up a number of deals, most notably in the three genre films that made up nearly half of Sundance’s Park City at Midnight program.

‘The bold wave of Canadian genre films that premiered in this year’s Park City at Midnight program promises to reach audiences beyond Sundance,’ summed up Sheila de La Varende, director, international and national business development at Telefilm. ‘A number of deals to the U.S. and abroad have been concluded, with more talks still underway.’

Most notably, Vincenzo Natali’s well-received sci-fi entry Splice, starring Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley, garnered quite a bit of buzz from its initial screenings, and by mid-festival it was widely reported that a bidding war was taking place. Though, in a sign of the times, distributors were offering service deals – under which a movie’s producers pay an upfront and a percentage of box-office returns to get the film into theaters – instead of a more traditional arrangement in which distributors simply pay for the film’s rights.

The other two Park City at Midnight entries – Eli Craig’s Tucker & Dale vs. Evil and Daniel Grou’s 7 Days – had better luck (though one would suspect things will work out well for Splice in the end). Tucker & Dale, a dark comedy about two hillbillies who head to a cabin only to discover they aren’t alone in the woods, had its French and German rights acquired by Wild Bunch and its Canadian rights bought up by Maple Pictures. A U.S. deal is likely to follow.

Days had its U.S. rights acquired by Sundance Selects just prior to the fest – the new theatrical and transactional video-on-demand film label for docs and world cinema which launched last summer. The Quebecois horror film’s deal was part of the ‘Direct from the Sundance Film Festival’ initiative, where three films (including Days) being screened at the festival would simultaneously be available nationwide, on-demand, through Sundance Selects.

Canada’s two other features at Sundance both screened in competition, with Adriana Maggs’ Grown Up Movie Star in the world narrative program, and Lixin Fan’s Last Train Home screening as a world doc. Movie Star was the only one of the two to pick up a prize – with actress Tatiana Maslany taking a special jury award for breakout performance, though it was Train Home – which had its world premiere late last year at the IDFA, where it won the top prize – that seemed to garner the most buzz.

‘Canadian documentaries have always found recognition and distribution at Sundance and this year was no different,’ said de La Varende. ‘The audience and critical reaction at the three sold-out screenings of Canada’s documentary entry Last Train Home bodes well for a repeat to the producers’ success here at the festival with Up the Yangtze.’

The most recent film from Montreal-based EyeSteelFilm (which produced Yangtze as well as fest favorite RiP: A Remix Manifesto), Train charts the journey of one family who are part of the staggering 130 million migrant workers who travel home for Chinese New Year. While the film hasn’t received a distribution deal as of yet, it’s hard to imagine one won’t materialize eventually.

The fest received 1,920 feature-length submissions from the U.S., while foreign submissions climbed to 1,804. Of those, 113 features made the lineup, with 42 of them international. Essentially, Canada made up 12% of the international presence.